In the latest Gamesforum Faces Behind the Fun, I’m delighted to be speaking to Kelly Chiu, Head of Marketing at Luna Labs, history nut and all round great person.

Hi Kelly, thanks for taking the time to speak with me today. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

I was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Vancouver. I spent five years in Montreal and two years in Berlin, which was where I originally started my career in ad-tech before arriving to London.

A fun fact about me is that I really didn’t enjoy each city I lived in except for London, and how I have a dog named Obi. He’s a Maltese and yes, he was named after Obi-Wan Kenobe.

That's interesting. So why did you dislike Berlin?

It’s really different. I originally went to Berlin for the history as I was a history major. I loved all the historical aspect of the city.

All the museums and sites were amazing, but it was very hard for me to make friends so I would say that was a huge part of it. Berlin wasn’t the one! 

What’s your role at Luna Labs?

I'm head of marketing at Luna Labs. At Luna, I'm responsible for all marketing activities, ranging from PR, content and partnerships, events to social.

Who and what are Luna Labs?

We’re a technology company for playable and video ads. In a nutshell, we provide mobile game studios and developers with the technology to create, manage, and optimise their creatives in-house. 

What does a typical work day look like for Kelly Chiu?

I usually have a lot of calls, between three to four a day. When I don’t have calls, I would split my time between planning our marketing activities (usually a month or two in advance), creating outlines for the projects I’m working on and catching up on industry news. 

Another fun fact about me, which everyone at Luna knows, is they can never leave a Kelly meeting without opening a doc. I just love making docs and sharing them whenever I’m talking about something.

Actually, let me show you the doc before I continue. Yeah, it’s always about docs.

If it's not a plan written down, it's not a plan. So are you an AM or PM person?

Oh, AM, definitely AM person. I'm most happy in the morning.

So how did you first get into the mobile games' industry?

I was doing content marketing for an influencer marketing platform. At that time when I joined, they only focussed on the gaming vertical. The company is called Matchmade, actually.

A part of my role was to analyse the stats of YouTube videos made by gaming influencers and write different articles about it. I just had so much fun doing that and being able to create content for both influencers and advertisers. Then, everything else just evolved.

So what was your favourite game growing up?

I actually had this conversation with my co-workers last week. So back in high school, I would go to internet cafes with my friends and play Left for Dead.

That was an excellent zombie game! So what are you playing now?

I’ve been obsessed with a two-player crossword game named Pictawords by FunCraft. Basically, you have to first sign in with your Facebook account. You then get matched with different people around the world to play crosswords with them.

What makes the game unique is that the clues are actually images. For example, you would see a picture of an apple beside a row of 5 empty spaces. The clues are often a lot harder and more complex than just an apple. 

In terms of having crosswords with images, it’s a Scandinavian thing. I didn’t know that. So check it out. I’ve been obsessed.

Last but not least, what is the biggest trend you think we'll see in 2021?

I’m not sure if you’ve seen it yet, but we recently launched our creative learnings from 2020 video. Part two is coming and it focuses on our predictions for the creative landscape in 2021.

With this being said, one of the biggest trends that we foresee is that studios will be producing more playable ads than ever and actually leveraging their different engagement points. This could be their time-to-engagement or any predefined custom event that they have, to better understand their users’ post-install journey and better optimise for growth.

Thanks Kelly Chiu, it’s been a pleasure speaking with you and learning more about you and your role at Luna Labs.

 Don’t forget to check out last week’s interview with Kooapps CEO, CK Wang